“The most cost-effective way to help the homeless is to give them homes.” – Idiots – IOTW Report

“The most cost-effective way to help the homeless is to give them homes.” – Idiots

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The newest idea is for the government to give every homeless person a home. Such ideas are backed by simplistic reasoning. For instance, in February Vox’s Matthew Yglesias wrote about research from Central Florida showing that “the region was spending about triple on policing homeless people’s nonviolent rule-breaking as it would cost to get each homeless person a house and a caseworker.”

That kind of statement is reminiscent of those who say such things as, “It costs more to incarcerate a person than it does to send them to college.” Yes, it does, and it’s a result of government’s enduring inability to provide public services cost-effectively. That makes an effective meme on a progressive Facebook page, but it illuminates nothing. It’s not like we can simply empty the prisons and send convicts to Berkeley instead.

Yglesias’s conclusion is that “when it comes to the chronically homeless, you don’t need to fix everything to improve their lives.… What you need to do is target those resources at the core of the problem — a lack of housing — and deliver the housing, rather than spending twice as much on sporadic legal and medical interventions.” The article’s premise is summed up in its headline: “The most cost-effective way to help the homeless is to give them homes.”

This line of thinking is echoed frequently these days, but it’s asinine. Yes, there’s a desperate need for nonprofits to build homeless shelters and sanitary temporary encampments, but just “giving” the homeless homes isn’t going to eliminate all the social-service, policing, and other costs. When perhaps half of the homeless won’t take free services, owing largely to their addictions and mental illnesses, this wouldn’t solve the problem by any stretch.

As H.L. Mencken wrote, “There is always an easy solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.”

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23 Comments on “The most cost-effective way to help the homeless is to give them homes.” – Idiots

  1. Remember the “Great Recession” crash? The sub-prime loan debacle? It was suggested by many back then that it would be cheaper to just pay-off the ~$1.4 Trillion in sub-prime loan balances than to have the U.S. and the FED bail-out everyone to the tune of unaccountable TRILLIONS of dollars. Boom, the actual source of the problem would vanish.

    But no. The whole deregulated financial system leveraged that debt world-wide beyond belief – and THAT’S why something so relatively simple couldn’t be done.

    Nothing has changed since then except that now, screw it, let’s just print the money forever and provide everything for free. That’s how the Corporate/Government Cabal thinks it can avert and survive the next crisis.

    But they’re wrong. Because on top of an unsustainable, debt-driven economy, the whole Medicare / Medicaid / Social Security / Government pension / deficit spending Kraken monster is knocking on our door. And it will consume everything this time, making the sub-prime disaster look like a bit player in a Shakespearean tragedy.

    Another reason to…

    Shut it down. Hold an Article V. Convention Of The States, disbandon the FED and re-establish the Constitution Of The United States.

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  2. Since the dawn of man we have had beggars, Hobo’s, bums and now “ Homeless”. Most of these people like their lifestyles and if you gave them a home they would trash it beyond repair. Enough already!

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  3. The homeless are not homeless because they don’t have homes.
    The homeless are homeless because they’re stupid, lazy, insane, or some/all of the above. If you give them homes, they’ll still be as flawed as before.

    (There are exceptions, but those are relatively rare.)

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  4. “Homelessness” is a misnomer, but it allows people an out from dealing with the real problems. They used to be called bums, addicts, drunks, hobos, street people, loons, thieves, drug dealers, trespassers, panhandlers, thugs, murderers, rapists, etc. There are people who are involuntarily without a home, for whatever reason, and are not any of those things listed previously, but they make up a very small fraction of the “homeless”.

    “Homelessness is not a crime”, they say, but most of the “homeless” are criminals, criminals who have been given immunity from prosecution — as long as they remain “homeless”.

    By enabling criminal and aberrant behavior, there is no incentive to improve.

    If there is ever going to be an issue that will break judicial legitimacy in the US, “homelessness” certainly qualifies.

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  5. Yes! Give them all a home.
    On Lazlo’s Work Farms and Poorhouses!
    An honest roof over their heads, honest food in their bellies, and an honest day’s labor in return.
    They can ‘commune with nature’ as they pick tomatoes, melons, squashes. Out in the fresh air with healthy activities as they recover from their addictions ‘working the land’
    They can enjoy the fruits of their labors as they pick fruit, earning a wage (less expenses for their upkeep) while they march boldly into the future with their heads high.
    Those unable to labor in the fields will labor in other ways, performing farm cleanup and maintenance an various animal husbandry jobs.
    Support cows and sheep will be provided for all!

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  6. With the right application of violence and fear you can change he behavior of anyone, including the homeless and criminal classes! Let the pyscho doctors take a shot at it!

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  7. Many of the “Homeless” would once have been itinerant workers who would sleep in the bunk houses and eat in the mess halls of the ranches, farms, mines, lumber camps, sawmills, and factories that employed them. Those jobs no longer exist, thanks to welfare, regulation, environmentalism, etc. A worker is not free to pursue work and an employer is not free to employ. Most of the remainder would have been housed in the multiple insane asylums in every state.

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  8. America tried this during the War on Poverty. In many cities – New York, Chicago, St. Louis come to mind – we built what came to be known as projects; high rise ghettos that became centers for drug dealing and violence. Almost all of these projects are gone now and their existence flushed down the memory hole of failed liberal causes.

    This housing idea was doomed to failure from the beginning. For one, the planners seemed to know that the intended residents had no idea of how to take care of housing, so the buildings were designed to be as indestructible as possible – dank, humid concrete dwellings. They were also hotbeds of crime – I spoke to a police officer who claimed he could see gunfire between buildings at Cabrini Greens at night, and the police were loathe to respond to calls in the projects after dark.

    Our current crop of Democrat whack-a-doodles are trotting out ideas that were tried 50 or 60 years ago, or not so long ago that many of us can’t remember them, and these ideas failed. We tried to provide housing for the poor and got the projects. We tried to eliminate poverty by giving people money and ended up with lots of poverty and a class of people depending on the government. We waged a war on drugs that gave us more drugs together with violent cartels.

    We need politicians that look at these things and say “fuckit, you people need to figure out a solution to your own damn problems because all the government does is screw things up.”

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  9. Lazlo, I love growing vegetables, so, can I be your foreman? I’ll sleep in the private bunkhouse (it IS private, right?) as long as it has HVAC. You got HVAC? I also build sheds and chicken coops, so use me, brother! And if you’ve got coal, I’ll help burn it for you so the Progressives don’t find it! I cook good, too. Plus, piano music. Also, I love bugs, spiders (they’re not bugs!) and birds. If there’s a lake or saltwater nearby, we can go sailing and fishing, both of which I’m accomplished at. I also program computers so a local area network is a must. Gotta have Internet, of course – surely you have 100+ Mbit/sec. service?! Plus, of course there’s lots of AC power, right? I need to bring all my electronics. I also have a large telescope that requires a concrete mount. How’s the shortwave reception there? You’re not down in a hole, I hope, that would mask a 50 footer? By the way, is their a private airstrip? Both my sons fly, so there’s a need there. Now, about all my relatives. There are many in multiple states and countries. I figure several thousand, overall. Could some of them come too, and stay awhile? I sincerely hope my needs aren’t too many or too large.

    Oh, wait. You mentioned “poor house.” Never mind.

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  10. The government needs to get out of welfare that they took over from churches.
    When you are hungry enough you will find work. Stop feeding them and they will change.
    Clean your street or farm to eat.
    This can start by having kids clean their rooms and homes when they are young, then clean their schools. It’s called responsibility. Parents ignore this at their own peril.

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  11. What Wyatt said.

    I remember a news program or documentary, a very long time ago when the media were more honest.

    Welfare recipients went into completely new, actually pretty decent furnished apartments in a new building. Within a couple of years, the place was full of trash, graffiti, broken windows, broken appliances, broken furniture, holes in the walls — a total mess.

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  12. It’s impossible to help people that refuse to help themselves they will piss on it every time and then blame you for it getting wet.
    Look no further than the reservations.
    If someone won’t invest in it with you then it has no value to them. They will burn it down and demand you build another better one.

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  13. Claudia, well, the kin and airstrip can go. They’re expendable, even sacrificial. Hey, a man has to make compromises! It’s hard, but we do it. Why, just the other day, I yielded the right-of-way to car with a “Resist” sign on it. Another sign said, “Trump’s second term: Prison.” I was so nice to him, I resisted killing him running him off the road! That’s the kind of guy I am. Live and let die live, my father always said. He was an old guy so I guess he’ll die soon enough. Like today. No, I mean the man in the car. Ah, let’s see, where were we? I know…

    Thanks, Claudia! 🙂

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  14. Jimmy, you just made me laugh so hard I cried!

    And you have every right to resist running idiots off the road. But you CAN give him a bit of a scare. Oops. That was mean. hehe

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